Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time, and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space. While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes, vast areas of the tropics remain understudied. In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity, but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases. To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge, it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Thermometry at the nanoscale using lanthanide-containing organic-inorganic hybrid materials

Non-invasive accurate thermometers with high spatial resolution and operating at sub-micron scales, where the conventional methods are ineffective, is currently a very active field of research strongly stimulated in the last couple of years by the challenging demands of nanotechnology and biomedicine. Here we report on the temperature operation range, spatial resolution and long-term stability of Eu3+/Tb3+ luminescent thermometers involving magnetic hybrid nanoparticles and di-ureasil thin films. (c) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

pH in exhaled breath condensate and nasal lavage as a biomarker of air pollution-related inflammation in street traffic-controllers and office-workers

Pathogenesis and treatment of chronic pulmonary disease